subscribe

Pages

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Saturday, November 15, 2008

So Shawn sent in this "specialty" cake:

Which might lead one to question what their "specialty" is. Hmm. Things from Down Under, perhaps? [smirk]

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Gee, Jen, I wish I could see that from another angle and with more color saturation," aren't you? Aha! I knew it. Well, luckily for you, Formica D. also sent in a photo of the exact same cake:

Wow. I don't know about you guys, but seeing that top "pile" in all its glistening glory is greatly grossing me out. Ick.

By the way, given that the displayed goods next to the cake went from ghostly strawberries to turkey cupcakes, just how long do you suppose it's been sitting there? Long enough to attract flies, perhaps?

I don't know what's more distracting: the, ahem, stem or the oddly colored flowers (which seem more appropriate for yesterday's fireworks explosion cake). Or the strawberries (it took me a minute to realize those were the strawberries to which you were referring). Ack! I need to go stare at a blank wall to give my eyes a chance to recover.

Word verification: promo. These are all holiday promos that misses the mark...

(Apologies if you get duplicates of this; the ol' wireless is acting up this morning.)

This is awesome, it like a huge orange marshmallow with a big pile of poop on top and yes its been sitting so long its growing colored fungus off to the side, oh wait it that a pumpkin growing flowers... oh woops... hehe i thought it was, ahhh never mind its all the naughty talk that really gets my mind thinking.... lol

I stared at the two cakes for a while cause I thought the same thing. I mean who leaves a cake in a window long enough to completely redecorate around it. Then I noticed the icing ridge next to the flower and the peak of...um.."icing" on the "stem" and grasped the truth of it. It's the same.

Alright. That's it. First thing on my list tomorrow is a canvas of local grocery cakes. Here in regional Australia, I've seen some real "winners" and I keep forgetting my camera. Since neither Halloween or Thanksgiving are holidays here (though both are catching on, the former because grocery stores are figuring out that Halloween is a great money-maker and the latter because we can't live without pumpkin pie and turkey), we ALREADY have Christmas cakes! That's right! I thought Christmas came earlier every year in the US and then I moved here and Christmas decorations go up in stores at the end of freakin' October! (The toy catalogs actually come out in July so that parents can put things on lay-away!) Our local grocery store bakeries also love their clear gel icing, which is ok in it's place but not when you plan on tipping one cake for display. Then it looks like the inscription is crying. I can't wait to go on Wreck-hunt!

What is it SUPPOSED to be? A pumpkin? But why would flowers be growing on the side of a pumpkin?A trophy for a girls' basketball team?A sofa cushion with a spring growing out of it?A statement against the genetic engineering of vegetables?Or is it just a flowered ball with dog poop on it?

We lost our jobs, sold our home, and are traveling the country in an RV. We call it temporary retirement. As we travel the US, we pickup our food supplies and I run to the bakery, with camera in pocket, eager to snap a photo of the next wreck. Jen, you have so many wreckporters at your disposal. How's that for power?

Did anybody else see the "flowers" as sea anemones? That was the first thing that came to mind when I saw them: a pumpkin encrusted with anemones, and maybe some kind of sea slug crawling on top of it.

That is soooo awesome!!! I can almost see the steam piping off the first pic...the ghost on the left side in the background kinda looks afraid of it...or mebbe he's hiding because he let go of that motherlode, wait ghost poop is invisible, isn't it?!

That is DEFINITELY the same cake in both pictures...the same bent over -um- "stem"...the same three orange ridges to the right of the 2nd flower from the bottom.

Can we pretend that one photo was taken on Halloween and the other on Nov 1st--let's just say this bakery is really on top of their Thanksgiving decorations--just to make me feel better...it's really grossin' me out. UGH!

word verification: obtnessi--what I'm going to obtnessi my lunch if I look at those photos again.

When the ghosts came out and the turkeys went in they did an air brush update. That would explain the brighter color on the second cake but the same ridges that John noticed. Kudos for the great air-brush job.

IF by chance it is meant to be a pumpkin, where's the little lines running DOWN the sides of said orange catastrophe? And doesn't the stem of a pumpkin have the same VERTICAL lines?

At first look I thought it was some weird orange like fruit - you know, like an orange, with one dirty great big caterpillar eating its way through said weird orange blob like thing. Of course, if that were the case, and in my defense it does look like some segmented worm/caterpillar type thingy's butt I would have expected the front end to be appearing from somewhere on the orange blob thing.

Of course, the reason I thought that was I never knew pumpkins had flowers and such growing out the side of them ;)

Haha! I actually took a photo of a cake very similar to that at our local grocery store, but since my photo software is on our old computer, I haven't gotten around to hooking it up, and downloading, and then transferring and uploading the photos.

It was smaller, and minus the flowers, but it had the little green vines and the pile-of-poo stem, and to top it off there were little piles of poo with vines decorating the plate around! It just looked all wrong.

Perhaps the creator of this....umm, item, wanted to give the impression that the 'flowers' are exploding out of the 'pumpkin'? Could it be a post-modernist comment on the first 'Alien' movie? Or perhaps..............HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Sorry, I'm laughing so hard I'm dripping tears all over the keyboard.

Word verification: vablougu. Yep, this 'cake' IS a total vablougu. And I don't mean that in a good way. :):)

since I'm a pro-photographer and all my gear would be well, kinda not so inconspicuous (giant camera, even bigger lens lol), I'd be seen (I've been seen and 'spoken to' by management on more than one occasion, but I'll never leave $5grand of gear in my truck ifyaknowwhatimean) but since I do have my iphone, and although I generally avoid the bakery area of the grocery store, I'm gonna have to start venturing that way in the hopes of finding some pretty nasty cakes. And there are some horrors....

I really do not think that any place like walmart, albertsons, safeway, coles (shoutout to stephanie since I'm an aussie living in the USA), king soopers etc, will ever be exempt from wrecking. Especially since most places like that don't pay the people enough to really care.

I LOVE your blog! When I was first introduced to it I went back through all your archives and looked at every single cake. My favorite is the one where it was supposed to be a really gorgeous William Wallace plaid and it turned into a drunken Rastafarian mess!

Every time I see a cake I wonder if it's the kind you would feature but I never take a picture. And the comedic anecdotes really make your blog special!

I don't even know what it is supposed to be! Most of the time you can at least guess what the intent of the decorator was, but I'm thinking....basket handle? cornucopia? misshapen tree? Surely the intent was not to actually depict what it looks like it is.....

I know the bakery that's from, at least I think I do - at least, the store from which it came. And they reproduce their "specialty" cakes over and over again during the season in which they make them until you're sick unto death of them!! I worked in their bakery myself, actually. And they - GASP! - sold FROZEN bakery items, including the most gorgeous chocolate mousse cake with a huge brittle chocolate ornate fan on top - it was amazing that it came from across the country, in one piece, and lasted months. And every. single. one. looked EXACTLY the same. Hence, my near-certainty that this is the same chain (well, the case, sign, strawberries, turkeys, and poo also) that this is the place I once worked....this isn't 2 pics of the same cake - it's two different cakes....just really, REALLY amazingly wrecktastically same decorating talent...

Ok so is it a pumpkin cake (notice in the first picture its next to halloween decorations) or a cornucopia ( in the second picture its next to Thanksgiving stuff) hmmmm? The sad part is it has either been made twice on purpose meaning someone bought this disaster or it has still never been bought since Halloween. LOL

jackie31337, that would actually be kind of neat: a cake done like a tide pool, with light cocoa frosting to suggest light brown rocks, white chocolate barnacles, and a concave top in which lurk tiny buttercream sea anemones and chocolate shellfish.

Jenny Islander

Word verification: Prepla. If those pictures are two different cakes, this wreck is done to a preplaed design. Which makes me wonder what designs they use for baby shower cakes . . .

It's not even the same cake..look at the flower placement on both..they are clearly different cakes..and yes that is way too much cornucopia icing on top..but overall I don't think it's that bad..either of them..

*reading comments* Wait, is it supposed to be a pumpkin? But pumpkins aren't all smooth and... Oh, a cornucopia? Yeah, but it doesn't look like... oh, never mind. It's just gross. And that's all. even though orange is my favourite colour.

Ya'll are missing out one of the best parts; in the first picture there is a cake in the background at least as worthy of notice. Looks like chocolate twinkies standing on end all around a pool of white frosting. Truly this bakery is a mecca for wreck hounds. And the strawberries! I thought they were fruit covered in mold. How special!!

Search This Blog

Wreck the Halls

NEW! Pre-Order Today!

Buy the Book

Buy the NYT Bestseller

What's a Wreck?

What's a Wreck?

A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

order

Where's the book?

We don’t have any copies of Cake Wrecks for sale here, autographed or otherwise. We decided the shipping and handling costs would be too high to make it worth your while. So instead, buy your copies locally or online and then order personalized bookplates: it’s cheaper, easier, and I think even looks a bit nicer.

Ordering Info

Payments must be made through Paypal, which accepts all major credit cards. Sorry, but that means no checks or MOs or barter-based chickens.

We ship everything first class USPS, and will do our best to have your package in the mail within 2 days of your order.